Agricultural machines such as balers, for example, are sometimes equipped with a crop pick-up that is wider than the baling chamber or other mobile container to which the picked up crop is being conveyed. EP 08 15 720 discloses a large round baler having such a pick-up and it is equipped with a rotary, tined pick-up reel having a width greater than that of the baling chamber and operable for elevating a windrow of crop material from the ground and delivering the crop material rearward onto a crop guide plate arrangement which extends to the inlet of the baling chamber. To aid this rearward movement of the crop material, right and left converging augers are provided at opposite ends of a centrally located tined rotor. The guide plate arrangement includes a region located closely adjacent the circular path traced by the peripheries of the augers and rotor. In order to provide relief for avoiding plugging, designers have mounted a central portion of the crop guide plate arrangement for moving downwardly, against a spring force, away from the tined rotor. The aforementioned EP publication has a floor constructed in this manner. Other baler pick-up crop guide plate arrangements that are movable relative to a tined rotor for avoiding plugging are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,819,517 and 7,252,587, noting that neither of these discloses a wide pick-up having converging augers.
A problem associated with the device of the EP publication is that with such devices it is known to provide right and left stripper plates on the front of the crop guide plate arrangement at respective locations in front of the right and left converging augers. When loads acting on the guide plate arrangement cause it to move downwardly from its normal working position in order to avoid a plugging situation, these stripper plates move with the guide plate arrangement and lose their effectiveness in preventing crop material from wrapping around the augers.
The problem to be solved by the present invention is that of providing a wide pick-up with a so-called drop crop guide plate arrangement while retaining an auger stripping function.